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Is there any question that American Manhood is on the ropes? A flock of books has appeared recently—some of them powerful bestsellers—on the subject of how to be a man, and there is the spontaneous efflorescence of the Men's Movement with its crop of drum-beating, consciousness-raising groups which have claimed so much attention in Time and Newsweek cover stories, and on TV by that earnest keeper of the cultural flame, Bill Moyers. All bespeak a perplexity of spirit in men these days. Dazed and disoriented by the cultural up-heavals of the last decade or two, menfolk no longer seem to know whether they are coming or going. Women are wearing jockey shorts and driving eighteen wheelers, men are wearing earrings and raising children. Outward manifestations merely? Or do they and countless other trivialities of the current scene imply a serious psychological drift toward androgyny?
In my boyhood—during the depression and World War II—the one issue we didn't have to worry about was what a man was or how a man was supposed to act. In real life you knew that a man earned a living for his wife and children, like my Dad, and was responsible for fixing things around the house and carrying the heavy stuff when you went to the beach or off on a vacation. You knew he was kind of the boss because the money came from him and he could drive. He was pretty nice and he'd let you do pretty much anything, but there